


A Paladin's Blade

by em_abi622



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, KeithxOC - Freeform, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 22:53:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30029067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/em_abi622/pseuds/em_abi622
Summary: Sirafina has grown up with the stories of her fathers space travel. She hadn't met him, but her mother would always tell her about the sacrifice he made for them. Anxious to follow in his footsteps, she enrolls at the Garrison. Her start is rusty, but she quickly bonds with Pidge Gunderson over an unusual technological blade her father owned. As Sirafina continues in another year at the garrison, she expects nothing but the usual simulations and scolding from Iverson. The year is like any other, slow and attentive, and boring. Even though she wishes to reach her goal, she feels like she is getting nowhere closer to going to space like her father. When an alien spacecraft falls to earth with the precious cargo of her believed-to-be-dead idol, Sirafina is pulled into saving him with the help of a few others. Together, Sira and the rest of the group uncover the Blue Lion of Voltron, sending them sky-rocketing into the depths of space. She is told that she is fit for the Amethyst Lion, but she feels unsure her herself and about her strength against the enemy. One thing Sirafina knows for sure, her fathers blade matches the glow of the enemy ships. Will Sirafina find her place, and will she uncover the mystery behind her blade?





	1. Precious Cargo

Sirafina sat on her bed, keys clicking as she searched the Garrison’s Archives for the dagger that laid inches from her computer. She had never seen anything like it, and neither had her best friend Pidge. The two shared their first conversations over it, nearly a year ago, and they had been searching for information on the purple and black blade ever since. Sirafina released a groan, before falling back onto her pillows, exasperated by her lack of success.

"Rough Researching?" Pidge. Sirafina was still getting used to the secret Pidge had confided in her, that she was truly a girl looking for her father and brother. She wasn’t quite accustomed to seeing a ‘boy’ in the girl dormitories yet. 

"Don’t even get me started," Sirafina spoke, as she pushed herself up to see her friend. 

Sirafina examined her for a second before asking the question that hitched up into her mind. 

"Why do you have your backpack?" Pidge smirked, worrying Sirafina a little. Pidge was up to something.

"I have something to show you," Pidge responded. Sirafina shook her head slightly but started putting a couple things in her backpack, along with her dagger before tossing it onto her back.

The pair quietly made it to the roof and sat down on the edge. It was silent as Pidge set up her equipment, but it was nice. However, the silence didn’t last long when Pidge broke it.

"You know I’ve been thinking," Pidge started, pulling Sira’s attention, "If your father’s dagger isn’t on any earth archive, maybe it’s simply, not from earth." Pidge had a valid point, but it took a moment to process.

"Are you proposing that he got it from an alien?" Sirafina clarified, trying to wrap her mind around the theory.

"Precisely. You see, I’ve been getting interception on the radio ever since I started searching for my brother and father, but it sounds nothing like anything I’ve ever heard before." The two went silent again as Pidge started up her equipment and handed a pair of headphones to Sirafina. They both sat in silence for a couple of seconds, listening to the static. Then she heard it. Unfortunately, she couldn't make out what it said in time because someone removed her headphones causing the sound to cut off.

"You come up here to rock out?" the voice spoke, a hint of teasing in their voice. Lance. Lance McClain. She hadn’t really met him but he was in her class and was on Pidge’s simulation team.

"AGH!" Pidge jumped, startled by the new presence. Beside Lance, crouched Hunk Garret, He seemed nice, and Sirafina’s suspicions were proved correct when he gave her a sweet smile.

"Oh, Lance, Hunk, No, um, Just…" Pidge searched for an excuse, but came out dry. "Lookin’ at the stars," She finally mustered out, a nervous smile twitching on her lips. Lance didn’t seem to care about her excuse, for his attention was on the tech Sirafina and Pidge had been using seconds earlier.

"Where’d you get this stuff? It doesn’t look like Garrison tech," Lance asked, a skeptical expression on his face. Another one of Pidge’s signature smirks painted her face,

"I built it," She answered proudly as Hunk looked closer at the tech, examining it up close. He made a move to touch the keypad, but Pidge quickly swiped his hand away.

"Stop it," she shot him before explaining what she built, "With this thing, I can scan all the way to the edge of the solar system," Sirafina was surprised. She knew that Pidge was intelligent and capable of many things, but she wouldn’t have expected her fifteen year old best friend to engineer something with potential to be better than the Garrison Tech. It wasn’t that she doubted Pidge, she was just surprised. Even at seventeen, Sirafina continued to struggle with the grasp of STEM, ironic that she was at a piloting school to go to space.

"That’s right? All the way to Kerberos?" Lance was suspicious, and Pidge was clearly not happy about that. Sirafina watched her friend with a slight frown before glaring at Lance.

"You go ballistic every time the instructors bring it up," Lance spoke, with a fair point. Sirafina didn’t want to be rude and knew she was sensitive about the topic, but Pidge had started to bring the suspicion on herself. Hunk soon distracted her again when he made yet another move to touch Pidge’s equipment, this time placing a hand on the satellite disk.

"What’s your deal?" Lance added, but was cut off by Pidge’s scoldings.

"Second warning, Hunk!" Pidge exclaimed. Sirafina couldn’t help but laugh a little at the chaos that occurred with this trio. 

"Look, Pidge, If we're going to bond as a team, we can’t have any secrets." Lance spoke, returning Sirafina’s glare before turning his attention back to Pidge. 

"Fine. The world as you know it is about to change." She confessed, her expression wary and longing. Pidge wasn’t quite sure about telling them this, but if she could get them to go away, she could focus on her search again. 

"The Kerberos Mission wasn’t lost because of some malfunction or crew mistake- STOP TOUCHING MY EQUIPMENT!" Hunk finally got the idea and rolled over, uninterested in anything again. Pidge quickly composed herself and started talking again.

"So, I’ve been searching the system and picking up alien radio chatter," It all made sense now. That was what Pidge wanted Sirafina to hear. It was also why Pidge believed her own proposal about the dagger so much. The responses about the idea were mixed though. Hunk was surprised and scared, and Lance concluded that Pidge was insane. Sirafina on the other hand, believed her. It wasn’t just that she trusted her friend, but the fact that she had heard it right before Lance stole her headphones.

"I’m serious. They keep repeating the word, “Voltron”. And tonight, it’s going crazier than I’ve ever heard it," Pidge flashed her notepad, the word Voltron in the center with a bunch of doodles. Lance was still unconvinced.

"What does your mute, glaring friend think? She doesn’t seem so convinced either." Sirafina quickly shot her head up and shot an icier glare with her grey eyes.

"Shove off, McClain, Besides, I believe Pidge. I might not fully understand it, but I’ve seen and heard my share of unusual things." Sirafina countered, causing Lance to back down.

"How crazy?" Lance asked, bringing the topic back to the radio chatter, still slightly unconvinced. Pidge was about to answer when the School Intercoms interrupted her. 

"Attention, students. This is not a drill. We are on lockdown. Security situation Zulu Niner. Repeat: All students are to remain in barracks until further notice." The group shot each other glances, confused about the lockdown. Everything seemed normal. 

"What's going on? Is that a meteor?! ... A very, very big... meteor?" Hunk pointed out something falling from the sky. And he was right, it was very big. Too big to be a meteor. Pidge pulled out her binoculars and zoomed in further.

"It's a ship!" She exclaimed before Lance grabbed them right from her hands and made her fall back.

"Holy crow! I can't believe what I'm seeing! That's not one of ours!" Lance yelled in surprise. Sirafina squinted at the ship, wishing she had brought her own binoculars. There was no way that she could pry Pidge’s away from Lance, now that he was engaged. 

"No. It's one of theirs." Pidge smirked, she was right. And now that she saw the alien craft, she believed the dagger theory more. 

"So wait, there really are aliens out there?!" Hunk cried, nervous about the new reality that was just thrown in all of their faces. Sirafina understood what Hunk was feeling. It was crazy and mind blowing that they had discovered aliens, but it was also scary. More so than she originally reacted. Sirafina pulled her jean jacket closer to her skin, before wrapping her arms around herself for comfort. Pidge immediately shot to her feet, Lance following behind.

"Pidge, think about what you’re doing," Sirafina spoke. She knew she couldn’t stop her friend, but she was nervous about this and wanted to at least make her think about it.

"We've gotta see that ship!" Pidge smiled, before running ahead.

"Hunk, Sirafina, come on!" Lance said excitedly before running off with Pidge. Sirafina was a little taken aback. She didn’t even know Lance acknowledged her, let alone knew her name.

"Oh, this is the worst team-building exercise ever." Hunk said, looking their way. Sirafina squeezed his shoulder reassuringly and ran off towards the two. She was still hesitant about all of this, but she thought about the dagger, and the fact that it could possibly have something to do with the alien craft. 

They ran away from the Garrison over to a cliff to get a better view. Pidge placed her things down and started typing into her computer. Now that they had a better view, she saw the design of the ship better. And she was right. It had a very similar glow to her dagger. It wasn’t the same, but it was a step closer to what she was looking for. Sirafina rolled onto her back and looked up at the stars. She didn’t really understand what she was seeing, and knew that the others would say if they saw anything.

"Whoa... What the heck is that thing?! ... And who the heck is she?" Lance zoomed in on the ship, before moving over to a girl walking out of some sort of building. 

"Lance!" Pidge quietly yelled and hit him, trying to get him back on track. 

"Ow! Ah, right, alien ship. Man, we'll never get past all those guards to get a look." Sirafina looked up to see what he was talking about before laying back down, defeated. He was right. There were way too many guards and who knows what would happen if the Garrison found them out of bed spying on something that most definetely confidential. 

"Aw, man. Yeah, we—yeah I guess there's nothing to do but head back to the barracks, right?" Hunk got to his feet and started to walk back, but was interrupted by Pidge.

"Wait. They set up a camera in there and I grabbed its feed. Look!" Sirafina quickly sat up and scooted closer to Lance to see what they were seeing.

"Shiro?" Sirafina exclaimed, seeing her idol poked and prodded and restrained by the Garrison technicians.

"Hey! What are you doing?" Shiro yelled over the coms. He was distressed. Sirafina scrunched her nose, her face full of concern and confusion.

"Calm down, Shiro. We just need to keep you quarantined until we run some tests on you." Iverson said, trying to calm Shiro down, but he didn’t prevail. 

"You have to listen to me! They destroyed worlds! Aliens are coming!" He cried, trying to get someone to listen to him but they ignored him. They didn’t believe him.

"That's Shiro! The pilot of the Kerberos Mission. That guy's my hero!" Lance exclaimed, pointing at the computer screen.

"Guess he's not dead in space after all." Hunk added looking over Pidge’s shoulder.

"Where's the rest of the crew?" Pidge questioned, but the others didn’t pay attention to the question. Sirafina reached over and placed a hand on Pidge’s shoulder. She didn’t have answers but she could comfort her friend.

"Do you know how long you've been gone?" Iverson was talking again.

"I don't know. Months? Years? Look, there's no time. Aliens are coming here for a weapon. They're probably on their way. They'll destroy us! We have to find Voltron!" Sirafina’s eyes grew wide at Shiro’s words. 

"Voltron!" Pidge was just as surprised, despite her long drawn research.

"Sir, take a look at this. It appears his arm has been replaced with a cyborg prosthetic." One of the technicians interrupted her thoughts and was given the order to put Shiro under.

"They’re putting him under! We have to stop them!" Sirafina demanded, wanting nothing but to save him. They weren’t listening to him and he was telling the truth. 

"They didn't ask about the rest of the crew." Pidge said, looking down. It hurt Sirafina to see her friend like this, but she didn’t know what to do.

"What are they doing? The guy's a legend. They're not even gonna listen to him?" Lance questioned, a little angry about what they were doing.

"We have to get him out." Pidge finally agreed, looking at Sirafina and Lance.

"Ah, I hate to be the voice of reason here, always, but weren't we just watching on TV because there was no way to get past the guards?" Hunk pointed out, standing up to his feet. 

"That was before we were properly motivated. We've just got to think. Could we tunnel in?" Lance responded. Sirafina couldn’t help but laugh at his remark.

"Tunnel in?" Sirafina giggled, earning a glare from Lance, but it didn’t push her mood down.

"Maybe we could get some hazmat suits and sneak in like med techs." Pidge suggested, trying to think of the possible ways to get in.

"Or we dress up like cooks, sneak into the commissary... little late-night snack." Hunk joined in, but tried to veer them away from sneaking into the crash site.

"... No. What we need is a distraction." Lance concluded, trying to think of anything they could do. As if it was planned, explosions sent off in the distance, drawing the guards and technicians away from Shiro. 

"Like that?" Sirafina asked over Hunks breakdown about it possibly being aliens.

"Yes! And It’s not aliens, those explosions were a distraction, for him!" Pidge said zooming her binoculars in on a boy landing his hoverbike and running into the site.

"The Garrison’s headed towards the blast, and he's sneaking in from the other side!" Sirafina exclaimed, pointing down at the boy.

"No way...! Oh, he is not going to beat us in there! That guy is always trying to one-up me!" Lance said, snatching the binoculars from Pidge and zooming in on the boy. 

"Who is it?" Hunk asked as he watched Lance run off.

"Keith!" Lance yelled loudly enough for Hunk to hear him but not too loud to draw attention.

"Are you sure?" Hunk asked before running after him.

"Oh, I'd recognize that mullet anywhere!" Lance answered irritated, not at Hunk, but at this Keith boy.

"Who’s Keith?" Pidge asked Sira, but Sirafina didn’t know either. She shrugged before running off towards the others.

They ran closer to the site, and ran in just in time to see the boy helping Shiro off the table. That’s when Sirafina recognized him. He was on her team before he flunked out. He seemed to recognize her too because he quickly studied her before Lance started to throw a fit. 

"Nope. No you—No, no, no, no, no, no, no you don't. I'm saving Shiro." Lance ordered, lifting up Shiro’s other arm and pulling it over his shoulder.

"Who are you?" Keith asked, continuing to hold Shiro as Lance tried to pull him away. Sirafina held in the laughs that tried to escape. Lance said he was alway one-upping him, but Keith didn’t even know who he was. 

"Who am I? Uh, the name's Lance." Nope. Nothing. Keith didn’t recognize him at all.

"... We were at the same class at the Garrison?" Lance clarified, trying to jog Keith’s memory.

Sirafina stepped away from the conversation and walked to the door. She felt a pair of eyes on her back, but she couldn’t worry about who was looking at her. The Garrison was coming back.

"Guys," Sirafina tried to pull their attention but didn’t succeed. "Guys!" They finally looked back and realized what she was telling them. 

"Oh, man, they do not look happy. We gotta go. Uh, do you mind if we catch a ride with you?" Hunk asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. Sirafina quickly climbed on infront of Pidge, but Keith jumped on right in front of her. 

"Is this thing going to be big enough for all of us?" Pidge asked, holding Shiro by the arms, just barely keeping her grasp.

"Nope." Keith responded but wasted no time speeding away on the hoverbike.

"Can't this thing go any faster?" Lance asked, looking back at the group of Garrison speeders on their tail.

"We could toss out some non-essential weight." Keith responded keenly, causing Sirafina to hit him on the back. He coughed for a second but let out a chuckle from her response. Lance started looking around for something to throw off, but quickly caught onto the insult.

They swerved causing some of the Garrison Vehicles to crash into each other and then they swerved another time soaring onto another cliffedge. Keith sped up smirking at what was in front of him. Sirafina looked up and started shaking her head. 

"Guys? Is th-th-th-tha-tha—Is that a cliff up ahead?" Hunk asked the obvious, starting to freak out. Sirafina wasn’t surprised at his actions, for he used to pull stunts like this in the simulation. That didn’t stop her from opposing though.

"No. Keith, don’t you dare. No, no, no, no, no!" Sirafina exclaimed trying to get a view of his face. He was still smirking, meaning he wasn’t really caring about the protests.

"Yup." Keith said right before driving the hover bike into the open air. 

"What are you doing?! You're going to kill us all!" Lance screamed, looking down at the ground beneath him.

"Shut up and trust me!" Keith called back. Sirafina didn’t know if she could, but she had no choice. She snapped her eyes shut out of fear and subconsciously grabbed onto Keith’s jacket. Keith flinched a bit, but Sirafina was too focused on fearing for her life to notice. Within seconds, Keith pulled up the bike and safely drove them all to a small wooden cabin in the desert. They had escaped the Garrison, but they had also almost died. 

✦✦✦

Shiro and Keith had been outside talking for a while, the others were standing around Keith’s wall that was hidden by sheet. Sirafina sat on the floor, looking at the dagger in her bag. The ship reminded her so much of the purple glow from the dagger, but she still wasn’t sure if it was the same technology. She sighed and turned to the opening door. It swung shut behind Keith and Shiro, causing a small draft to ripple through the room. Keith swiftly pulled the sheet away from the wall revealing maps and diagrams tacked to the coakboard like material. 

"What have you been working on?" Shiro asked, examining all of the different details that Keith pinned to the board. 

"I can't explain it, really. After getting booted from the Garrison, I was kinda... lost and... felt myself drawn out to this place. It's like something... some energy, was telling me to search." Keith explained, looking at the board and then at the group. 

"For what?" Shiro asked again, trying to understand all the research Keith had been conducting.

"Well, I didn't really know at the time... until I stumbled across this area. It's an outcropping of giant boulders with caves covered in these ancient markings. Each tells a slightly different story about a blue lion, but they all share clues leading to some event, some arrival happening last night. Then you showed up." Keith added, before going silent.

"... I should... thank you all for getting me out. Lance, right?" Shiro held out his hand toward Lance. Lance looked down at the hand, but hesitantly shook it before offering Shiro a smile. 

"The quiet girl’s Sirafina, and the nervous guy's Hunk. I'm Pidge. So, did anyone else from your crew make it out?" Pidge introduced us, then asked about the team. Her father and brother. Sirafina knew what it was like to grow up without a father, but a brother and father disappearing was something she couldn’t comprehend. 

"I'm not sure. I remember the mission and being captured. After that, it's just bits and pieces." Sirafina wished for Pidge’s sake that Shiro knew more, but that simply wasn’t the case.

"Yeah, sorry to interrupt, but back to the aliens. Where are they now? Are they coming? Are they coming for all of us? Like where are they at this very moment?" Hunk was clearly panicked, and Sirafina didn’t blame him. It was a lot to take in. 

"I can't really put it together. I-I remember the word "Voltron". It's some kind of weapon they're looking for, but I don't know why. Whatever it is, I think we need to find it before they do." Shiro’s response seemed to ease Hunk’s worry, but he also seemed to be thinking about something new.

"Well last night, I was rummaging through Pidge's stuff, and I found this picture. Look it's his girlfriend." Hunk started, Sirafina failing to hold back a laugh and masking it as a cough. The picture was a picture of Pidge—Katie—and her brother Matt. It was amazing how she looked so much like him in her disguise.

"Hey, gimme that! What were you doing in my stuff?" Pidge quickly picked the picture out of his hand and tucked it in her backpack. Hunk then replaced the picture with a journal. 

"I wa—I was looking for a candy bar. But then, I started reading his diary." Pidge then took the diary back and placed it with the picture. Talk about boundary issues.

"WHAT?!" Pidge yelled, obviously feeling invaded.

"And I noticed that the repeating series of numbers the aliens are searching for looks a lot like a fraunhofer line." Hunk explained, not bothering to excuse himself from reading Pidge’s diary. 

"Frown… who?" Keith asked, confused. Someone must not have been paying attention in physics class. But if there was one thing Sirafina picked up in class, it was that. 

"It's a number describing the emission spectrum of an element," Sirafina explained, earning a quick glance from Keith before he averted his gaze. 

"Right! Only this element doesn't exist on Earth. I thought it might be this Voltron, and I think I can build a machine to look for it, kinda like a Voltron Geiger Counter." Hunk explained causing Lance to praise him. 

"It's pretty fascinating, really. Th-The wavelength looks like this." Hunk added, pulling out a graph of the emission spectrum.

"Give me that." Keith exclaimed, pulling the diagram out of Hunk’s fingertips too. He slowly lifted it to a picture of a canyon on his wall. Sirafina pushed herself or her feet, and looked at the two more carefully. They looked almost exactly the same. 

✦✦✦

Before Sirafina knew it, she was standing infront of some random canyon, waiting for a little machine to tell her and the others where Voltron was. What even was Voltron? Maybe it was the lion that Keith was talking about in those stories, but maybe it wasn’t.

"... OK. I admit it. This is super freaky." Lance said, looking up at the canyon.

"Tell me about it," Sirafina responded, earning a chuckle from Lance.

"I'm getting a reading." Hunk started to follow the beeps into a cave. Sirafina followed behind slowly, admiring the carvings on the cave. She had never seen anything like it. 

"What are these?" Shiro asked, referring to the designs that Sirafina was busy examining.

"These are the lion carvings I was telling you about. They're everywhere around here." As Keith answered, Lance went up to them and lightly brushed away the dust from one to see it better. Suddenly, all of the carvings started to glow blue.

"Whoa... Whoa!" Lance exclaimed, jumping back startled. 

"Heh, they've never done that before." Keith said surprised, before the floor beneath them glowed blue like the carvings and broke from beneath them. 

"Aehhh!!!" Sirafina screamed, grabbing the closest thing to her. She shut her eyes tight as she fell down the hole—no, waterfall, into a large puddle. She realized that she had been holding onto Lance’s jacket and she quickly apologized and drew her attention away from him. She then realized that her clothing was soaked, from the white mock neck she was wearing to the cropped blue sweater vest ontop. Her jeans weren’t too soaked but the wet denim wasn’t very appealing against her skin. Sirafina pulled her sheepskin jacket closer to her before looking at what everyone else was looking at. 

"They  _ are _ everywhere." Lance stated, looking at a giant blue mechanical lion that sat behind some sort of blue force field. 

"Is this it? Is this the Voltron?" Pidge asked looking up at the monstrous robot-ship.

"It... must be." Shiro answered, looking up at it himself.

"This is what's been causing all this crazy energy out here" Keith concluded, before slowly approaching it. Sirafina and the rest of the team were hesitant, but they quickly followed. Sirafina brushed a strand of her wet grey-brown hair that had been sticking to her cheek, behind her ear. She examined it as she nervously brushed her fingers through her waist length hair. 

"Looks like there's a force field around it." Keith said, continued to run up to it.

"Does anyone else get the feeling this is staring at them?" Lance asked, moving in a zigzag motion, watching the eyes closely.

"Hmm… No." Shiro said, taking a moment to see if it was following him too. 

Sirafina caught up to Keith, missing the conversation behind her, though she didn’t mind. He lightly pressed his hand on the field, but nothing happened.

"Is it not doing anything?" Sirafina asked, looking at where his hand sat. 

"Nope. I wonder how we get through this." He responded, moving his hands around to see if it would open. Nothing. 

"Maybe you just have to knock," Lance suggested, approaching the lion and lightly tapping it with his knuckles. Sirafina thought he had to be joking, but then it started to glow and the field disintegrated. The eyes started to glow yellow, and the cave was strangely windy. Then she got a vision. There were five lions flying in formation to form some sort of robot. And soaring around the robot, was a beautiful purple lion. As quick as the vision appeared, it vanished.

"Uh, did everyone just see that?" Lance asked, but no one responded to his question.

"Voltron is a robot! Voltron is a huge, huge, awesome robot!" Hunk exclaimed excitedly, 

"And this thing is only one part of it! I wonder where the rest of them are." Pidge added, sounding surprised. Sirafina looked up at the lion in awe before turning to the others. 

"Woah," She spoke softly, smiling at Pidge.

"This is what they're looking for." Shiro realized, continuing to look at the robot.

"Incredible," Keith finally spoke, just before the lion started to move. It ducked its head down and opened it’s mouth, granting the group entrance. Lance looked at it hesitantly, but quickly ran into the cockpit and made his way to the pilots seat. Everyone followed close behind, awaiting to see what the inside of the lion would behold.


	2. Leaving Earth

"Here we go." Lance said, relaxing into the chair. Then unexpectedly, it pulled forward, a hologram control panel appearing. The rest of the group entered the cockpit and looked around the lion. Sirafina stood behind Pidge, her hands on the pilot seat, examining the control panel. She had never seen anything so technologically advanced. Not even the Garrison Tech could do that. 

"Heheh! All right! Very nice!" Lance laughed, a screen turning on, showing them their surroundings. 

"OK guys, I-I feel the need to point out, just so that we're all, y'know, aware: We are in some kind of futuristic alien cat head right now." Hunk said, gesturing to the inside of the lion. Sirafina smiled but then she noticed Lance looked really out of it. She placed her hand on his shoulder to see if he was alright but he didn’t react. Finally, after a couple of seconds, he turned his head to Hunk. 

"Whoa, did you guys just hear that?" Lance asked, looking to see if anyone else had. 

"Hear what?" Keith asked confused, waiting for Lance to respond. 

"I-I think it's talking to me. Hmm... Um..." Lance started, his voice veering off as he started to press a few buttons on the control panel. The lion then stood up and roared, causing Sirafina to lose her footing, falling back into Shiro. He helped her up quickly, accepting her thanks for catching her. Hunk and Pidge looked out the window horrified, totally not expecting what had just happened. Shiro and Keith just stood there amazed, waiting for something more to happen.

"OK. Got it. Now let's try this." Lance smirked, pushing the levers in front of him forward. The lion shot up out of the cave and started flipping and twirling through the air. Everyone grabbed onto the seat, trying to stay upright as Lance flew the lion like a maniac. This however, did earn a reaction from Keith. 

"YOU ARE. THE WORST. PILOT. EVER." Keith yelled, just before the lion boosted again and shot through the air. Sirafina looked up from where she was holding on for her life, seeing Keith leaning forwards, his eyes closed. The sight was actually kind of funny to her. Keith had always done tricks in the simulator, not nearly as crazy as these, but she would have never expected him to be a little scared right now. The lion landed, and started running across the desert floor at a high speed. 

"Isn't this awesome?!" Lance smiled excitedly, but the same response could be said for the rest of the team. 

"Make it stop! Make it stop!" Hunk cried, starting to look nauseous. 

"I'm not making it do anything. It's like it's on autopilot!" Lance clarified. With that, the lion shot into the air climbing through the atmosphere.

"Where are you going?!" Keith exclaimed loudly.

"I just said it's on autopilot! It says there's an alien ship approaching Earth. I think we're supposed to stop it." Lance repeated himself, the lion continuing to fly higher. 

"What did it say, exactly?!" Pidge demanded.

"Well, it's not like it's saying words, more like feeding ideas into my brain. Kind of." Lance responded, and glared at Pidge. 

"Oh so it's purring into your frontal-cortex?" Sirafina asked sarcastically, looking unconvinced.

"Yeah! That!" Lance exclaimed.

"Huh. Guess you’re the insane one," Sirafina muttered to herself, think back to last night when Lance accused Pidge of being insane.

"Well, if this thing is the weapon they're coming for, why don't we just, like—I don't know, give it to them? Maybe they'll leave us alone. Sorry, Lion, nothing personal." Hunk said, looking around at the others and then at the lion as he apologized to it. 

"You don't understand. These monsters spread like a plague throughout the galaxy, destroying everything in their path. There's no bargaining with them. They won't stop until everything is dead." Shiro retorted, as everyone stared at Hunk.

"... Oh. Never mind then." Hunk said, looking at everyones unimpressed stares. Sirafina removed her focus from Hunk and looked at the screen. They had left the atmosphere. They had left home, and she hadn’t even told anyone or said goodbye. Of course, how could she have known she was going to get on a giant blue lion today, but she still wished she had some sort of warning. Sirafina was pulled away from her thoughts when a giant ship with glowing purple details, much like the ship Shiro crash-landed in, approached the lion. 

"Uh guys, we have company," She said, pointing at the ship on the screen.

"Uh…" Everyone gasped looking at where Sirafina’s finger was signaling

"Holy crow! Is that really an alien ship?!" Hunk asked, but received no answer.

"They found me..." Shiro realized, just as the ship started firing at the lion. 

"We've got to get it out of here!" Pidge yelled.

"Hang on!" Lance responded, starting to dodge the fire power from the ship. "Ah! All right! OK, I think I know what to do!" He added, getting a better grip of controlling the lion.

"Be careful, man! This isn't a simulator!" Pidge reminded Lance, hoping that would knock some sense into him. 

It didn’t.

"Well, that's good. I always wreck the simulator." Lance joked, as he kept dodging the lazer like fire and shooting his own at the ship.

"Oh. My. God." Sirafina groaned burying her head into her arms that rested on the seat. She was going to die. And not only had she forgotten to say goodbye to her friends and family for leaving earth, she forgot to say goodbye for dying. She felt a hand on her back, and she glanced up at who it belonged to. She gave Shiro a slight smile of appreciation before lifting her head back up and looking out the screen. 

"Let's try this." Lance said as he clawed the ship with the lion’s paws causing the marked areas to explode.

"Nice job, Lance!" Shiro praised him, as they flew away from the ship. 

"OK, I think it's time to get these guys away from our planet." Lance started to go further away from earth, and the alien ship pursued them. 

"Oh, no!" Sirafina gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth.

"They're gaining on us!" Pidge pointed out, like she was trying to tell the lion to go faster with the tone of her voice. 

"It's weird. They're not trying to shoot us. Th-They're just chasing." Lance said, like it was any better.

"OK, seriously, now we think having aliens follow us is good? I am not on board with this new direction, guys." No one seemed to have noticed what Hunk had said, but Sirafina. She gave him a soft smile, trying to reassure him. 

"Where are we?" Keith demanded. Sirafina looked around, but she didn’t know. If anyone had the answer, it would be Pidge or Shiro. 

"Edge of the solar system. There's Kerberos." Shiro responded, pointing out one of pluto’s moon.

"It takes months for our ships to get out this far. We got out here in five seconds." Pidge said surprised, but the surprise over the moon didn’t last as it was replaced by a new surprise: A giant cosmo circle appeared in front of them. It looked like space on the inside, but there were foreign teal runes glowing as a border.

"What is that?!" Hunk asked the question everyone else was thinking. 

"Uh, this may seem crazy, but I think the Lion wants us to go through there." Lance said, the surprise in his voice growing stronger as he spoke. 

"Where does it go?" Pidge asked and Lance looked at her with no answer on his features. 

"Uh, I-I don't know," Lance spoke softly looking into the mysterious portal in front of them,

"Shiro, you're the senior officer here. What should we do?" He asked, adding onto his response to Pidge.

"Whatever's happening, the Lion knows more than we do. I say we trust it, but we're a team now. We should decide together." Sirafina nodded with the rest of the team, but no one said anything. They all had come to the conclusion to go, simply with looking out confidently at the portal—wormhole, whatever it was. 

"... All right. Guess we're all ditching class tomorrow." Lance said before guiding it into the wormhole. It closed right before the other ship could follow. They all groaned from the pressure as they traveled through it, and exited near another planet. It resembled earth, but they couldn’t be anywhere near earth anymore. 

"Whoa. That was..." Lance started but was interrupted when Hunk doubled over with nausea and released. 

"So sorry—" Hunk said, looking up, but double back over again. 

"I'm just surprised it took this long." Pidge said, earning a smile from Sirafina. As Pidge’s best friend, she had heard many stories about Hunk vomiting in the simulations, and was surprised he still wanted to space with his major motion sickness. 

"I don't recognize any of these constellations. We must be a long, long way from Earth." Shiro changed the subject, looking at the stars surrounding them. 

"The Lion seems to want to go to this planet. I think... I think it's going home." Lance spoke as the lion started to enter the atmosphere of the planet. The team huddled together due to yet more turbulence. 

"Guys, personal space! Hunk, your breath is killing me." Lance yelled. Sirafina felt bad for Hunk, he couldn’t control his sensitive stomach, and he was being scolded for it. 

"Um, is it just me or is anyone else having second thoughts about flying through a mysterious Wormhole? Why are we listening to a robotic lion anyway?" Hunk had a point. They had no idea where they were going and whether or not the lion had alternate intentions. 

"It got us away from that alien warship, didn't it?" Lance reminded, but was cut off by Keith.

"I don't know if you noticed, but we're in an alien warship." Keith retorted, standing up from where he was crouched. 

"Oh, are you scared?" Lance teased smirking,

"With you at the helm? Terrified." Keith insulted, but Lance’s smirk didn’t drop. Before he could throw out an insult of his own, Shiro spoke up. 

"All right, knock it off! No one's happy to be in this situation, but we're here now. If we want to get through this, we've got to do it together." Sirafina jumped, startled by his presence. He was so quiet for a couple of seconds that she forgot he was there. 

"So, what do we do?" Pidge asked, unsure and a little scared.

"First, we find out where we're headed. Lance?" Shiro asked, but Lance seemed to be just as out of the loop as the rest of the team.

"I don't know. I'm sorry. The Lion's not talking to me anymore. ... Wait! Wait, wait, wait! Shh! Listen. I think I hear something."Lance said, before everyone went silent to listen. There was something, there was a squeak. 

"I'm hearing it, too." Keith said surprised,

"It's, uh—It's kind of a—a high-pitched squeal?" Hunk described, continuing to listen. Then Sirafina sniffed and realized what was really going on. 

"Come on, Lance!" Shiro, Keith, and Hunk scolded. 

"Ugh, you’re so immature!" Sirafina exclaimed, before tucking her nose into her shirt to block out the smell. 

"But seriously, there's a Castle up ahead." Lance pointed at the screen as the lion soared down to an ornate white castle, with glowing blue glass on each spike. As the lion drew closer, it’s eyes grew brighter and glass like material on the castle glowed brighter with it. Everyone gasped in awe and the lion landed itself in the courtyard. 

"Wow." Keith exclaimed at the castle.

"Keep your guard up." Shiro ordered, looking at the castle skeptically. 

"Something wrong?" Pidge asked, a tad confused. 

"My crew was captured by aliens once. I'm not going to let it happen again." Pidge understood now, more than any of the others. The lion then opened and the team exited. Sirafina had a little trouble at first, her legs weak from the turbulence, but she quickly recovered and stopped using the lion as support. As she stepped away, the lion stood up and she fell back, her progress going to waste.. 

"Oh no! Oh no! I knew it was going to eat us! No!" Hunk cried, getting ready to be swallowed, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the lion roared and the doors to the castle started to open. 

"Oh, the door is open. Guess I was wrong about you." Hunk said apologetically to the lion and looked inside. Keith held out a hand to Sirafina, and she shyly took it, a soft blush tinting her cheeks. She didn’t know why, but she had a hunch. Sirafina held onto Keith’s hand longer than originally planned, trying to resteady herself. Keith softly cleared his throat, reminding her that she was still grasping onto his wrist. She gently pulled away and looked at her shoes.

“Sorry,” Sirafina quietly squeaked in apology. She felt so much more flustered now. She looked back up at the castle and into the dark halls.

With slight hesitation, the team pushed forward into the sleeping castle. 


End file.
